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Month: January 2014

I was at the store a few weeks ago and saw a bottle of Jergen’s original scented lotion. I don’t usually buy that brand, but it triggered a sweet memory in me of my grandma Broadway’s house from when I was a little girl. That was the lotion she bought. I always got to use a little bit when I was there, and it has a very distinct scent. I wanted to savor that memory, so I bought it. Isn’t it funny how different smells or sounds or words can trigger a memory….just pull it up out of nowhere? Some of those memories bring joy with them and fond, sweet feelings…but some of them can be downright mean. They come with anger and sadness and pain. Sometimes our memories can even seem like they’re out of control…and we remember things we’d rather forget and forget things we really need to remember. What do we do then…

I have always loved gymnastics. I took lessons at the YWCA, and I tried out for the team in the 6th grade…and I made it. I was so happy! During my very first back handspring of my very first practice, my arm landed funny…and it broke. I mean really broke it. Both bones in my forearm snapped in half, and my wrist was lying on the floor somewhere back by my elbow. (Gross, right?) The gym was full of girls…crying girls at this point. We were all traumatized. At my first visit back to the gym, some of the girls told me they couldn’t get the sight of my arm out of their head. They couldn’t get that sound out of their head of my bones snapping in half. They couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even 20 years later, I ran into a girl that was there, and she told me, “I will NEVER forget that day!” What we see and what we hear impacts our thought life….

We were in Tennessee a few years ago for my grandma’s memorial service, and we stayed with my Aunt and Uncle…and so did my cousin. With his two young grandsons. They were all boy. They were a bundle of motion from sun up to sun down. They never stopped. They were hard to control. They made us older folk tired just watching them. We had to get up at early o’clock to start our drive home, and Mikel and I crept into the kitchen as quietly as possible. As soon as we saw my uncle Gus, he looked at us, pointed to where the boys were sleeping, and said real serious-like, “Don’t wake up the storm!” What do we do when our thoughts are like my cousins…like a storm in our heads?

My sweet daughter remembers everything. Out of the blue, she will say, “Remember 3 years ago when we had pancakes for breakfast and you said we could go to the mall? We never went to the mall. Can we go today?” I may be exaggerating, but not by much. I’ve even learned to be noncommittal in my responses to her because if I do something even just a tiny bit off from what I said, she will let me know it. “Mom, that’s NOT what you said!” What happens when what we see isn’t what HE said?